BOB HOLMAN

We take a room at the simple, slightly uncomfortable Campement, immediately head in to town to shoot the port sunset. Amazing site sight, boats crisscrossing, sunset, boys poling along. Head over to renowned Bar Bozo (Bozos being the big fisher tribe in this locale) for the “best sunset in Mopti.” Stunning, ancient, exciting, full of quotidian beauty. That is if your quotidian happens to be Mopti, Mali. (BTW, if you’re following the Blog closely you’ll know about our police and border difficulties. We did have a run-in with some police above Bamako, but there are no internal border crossings in Mali, and the few police we see just give Abdullah a nod.)

We have a fine meal, Restaurant Sigui, of three different kinds of capitaine, the big local fish: en brochette (yummy), a Bamako (with bananas and yucca) (m’yumyum), Venise (broiled and covered with a wonderfully piquant red sauce) (c’est tres bon). Bea gets involved in a bidding war for a blanket with three local sheepherders. She compares softness, size, design. The bidding starts at 50,000 CFA (French African Francs, about 500 = $1). Now Bea is down to two, and when one finally hits the 20,000 mark: Yes! says Ms Bea, hands over the cash. Cuddling her new purchase, she says, “How warm I will be in Timbuktu!” at which point the losing seller looks at her plaintively, “15,000?”

By now (9:45), it seems all places to access the internet in Mopti are closed. Bea asks at the Campement, where the clerk wants to know if she really needs it. Bien sur. So we walk over to a group of guys having a beer on the patio and the desk clerk relays our request, in Bambara. One fellow gets up and motions for us to follow. Which we do, all the way to his house/office, part of a travel agency it seems, and we spend an hour doing the basics, mainly informing people we’ll be Off the Grid for 2-3 days. Fitful sleep, fleeting dreams.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/

Days since writing for the blog.  The doing overtakes the talking about the doing and the writing, which is the kind of talking about the doing I’m doing now, and sometimes you are the audience itself, dear Reader. Still the miles flow under and we head, full of anticipation and eyeful quaffing eyeful, kora note after note, towards Timbuktu.

Mud villages are generally Fulani now (with some Bela); the straw encampments, built around tree branches held together by twine, are the Bozo fishermen, whose pinasse boats are decorated with flag- like rectangles and the date of building near the stern,  and who ply these waters with nets. The big adventure this morning was when we came across a three-boat net laid out all the way across the river, with the boss walking net on the near shore. We tried to maneuver under the  net line, but eventually the two outer boats pull their nets together, allowing us to swing around outside them. A twenty minute example of sharing the river, accompanied by all kinds of shouts and recriminations between the two groups.

We embark from Mopti like real filmmakers, which is to say we did it and then we did it again from a different angle. Amodou 2, our river guide, had never heard of such a thing, but everybody enjoyed the silly tubabs (white people – I guess I mean me, Bea being Brazilian, Lamont African-American, Karamo African, Ram Indian) who had to leave twice. We were going to do it three times, but Bea figured that my entering the boat and taking off needn’t be repeated by the Karamo-and-me duet, that my sailing alone mid-Niger would suffice for both films. That felt good, loading everybody in after the second shot: Karamo with kora and Bob, poeticizing, hop on board.

Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/